John Agar

I’m guessing there are other Mysties out there like me who find great joy in the “masterpieces” of John Agar. We just did an interview with some actors (now in their 80’s) who were friends with him and shared some funny stories about Mole People and other films. YAY John Agar! Episode 18: John Agar - YouTube

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Of late my tackling of Sci-Fi MST3Ks reminded me. Fort Apache (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), Sands of Iwo Jima (1949), Breakthrough (1950), Revenge of the Creature (1955), Tarantula (1955), The Mole People (1956), Attack of the Puppet People (1958), The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre (1967). He certainly left an impression.

Yes, and thank you for reminding us not everything he was in was crap. Sure, a lot of it was, and unlike some other actors he was not always the best thing in it, but still …

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John Ford handled him best. Then again he did that with everybody.

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Read in an Angry Pearl voice: Oh, it’s a John Agar Film Fest for you!

He had that certain bland, inoffensive, je ne sais quoi about him that seemed to be the gold standard in Hollywood B-movies. I could almost believe he felt something for Adad in The Mole People.

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HOLY HELL

Y’all need to watch Zontar, the Thing from Venus, a 1967 made-for-TV remake of It Conquered the World co-written and directed by Larry Buchanan, the guy responsible for Attack of the the Eye Creatures.

Yeah, it’s… not very good.

John Agar plays the Peter Graves role, aaaaaaand that goes about as well as you’d expect.

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I will forever be salty about Adad’s fate in The Mole People. She got the rawest of raw deals at the conclusion, and I intend to be perpetually miffed about it.

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Yes! I think I hate the ending of Mole People more than any other film I’ve seen…but I’m probably missing one.

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As MST3K episodes go, the concluding act of The Girl in Lovers Lane may very well tick me off as much as The Mole People, if not more.

To swing this back in the direction of John Agar, I’ll say this: I’m painfully aware that he’s in Revenge of the Creature and The Mole People, but I’m always surprised when I put on Women of the Prehistoric Planet after a stretch of not watching that and seeing that Agar’s in that.

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Is Big Stupid or John Agar the more slappable “hero”?

Let’s stall for time by going to the flow chart for this one.

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Yes! She was courageous in helping them escape and she ventured into a world she’d never experienced before and then… DEAD. Pah. I normally don’t care so much about stupid directorial decisions but this one made me angry.

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Agar.

Big Stupid is indecisive. Agar is pompous. It’s a cinch.

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He’s decisive about not wanting to finish anything he starts. : P

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THIS SO MUCH

The only good thing I can say about the ending is that it didn’t have a drawn-out moralizing speech by Agar about the foibles of mankind or some crap. THAT would have been even more galling.

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Honestly, I don’t mind Agar so much. He was probably going for the stoic hero and just wasn’t a good enough actor to pull it off so it came off as pompous. But he was very aware of the quality of the B-movies he was in and he seems to have had fun making them anyway.

And without Agar, we wouldn’t have had this:

_The Brain from Planet Arous, reż. Nathan Juran (USA, 1957)_gif | destroyka

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SPEAK OF THE DEVIL

agartarantula

I was just watching Bug Out, a documentary about a heist of rare live insects, and the opening featured a clip of Agar from Tarantula (and that movie has an uncredited Clint Eastwood as a fighter pilot!).

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But can it compete with Peter Graves being chased by a flying mitten (on Biography)?

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I think the brain-shaped balloon/ax fight is funnier looking. :slight_smile:

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1000 percent. He’s respectable when he’s not in schlock. His sincerity sold me in Fort Apache (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), and Sands of Iwo Jima (1949). His Universal contract threw him into types of pictures where his presence overwhelmed the subjects and the directors didn’t tone him down or restrain him between shots. He should have noticed his overbearing manner yet as the years passed this became noticeable as tastes changed.

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Agar is definitely better in supporting roles.

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